Monday, December 31, 2012

My goals for 2013

My daughter Mariam asked me why I didn't write in English. I could have many more followers, she said. And although the number of followers is not of importance to me, I am going to give it a try …… and track the number of clicks :-)

Here is my last post in English:

If you want to commit yourself to something, you should announce it to as many people as you can. When I decided to finish an Ironman, I started talking about it to many colleagues. Just before the competition, I changed assignments and was in the middle of relocating from Hungary to Germany. I had enough excuses to give up my goal but, I would have still felt embarrassed explaining that.

The beginning of a new year is always a time to set new goals. I'm going to do this and announce my goals as well. This year my goals won't sound as challenging as last year. After all, I won't be doing an Ironman race. I'll use the year to develop my endurance and speed without the pressure of an Ironman competition. I will, however, do a half-ironman race. It will be a race in September in Cologne, Germany where I live now. I will also do the triathlon in Clausthal which I have done for the last 2 years since it was established. In the last 2 years I did the sprint distance. In 2013 I will do the Olympic distance which they will introduce for the first time there. I've never done an Olympic distance race before; I skipped it and went directly to the middle and long distances.

These races might not sound challenging enough after having completed an Ironman competition, but they are in fact as I'll try to do them at a higher speed. I have a reference for my speed at a half-ironman race which I want to beat. It is my Vienna race time from 2012.

The other challenge for this year is to lose more weight. I've lost a little bit of weight last year, but I want to lose another 5 kilograms. This will also help me increase my speed. I will probably not disclose my weight here (although with this blog I already feel like sitting in a glass house) but I will report my weight loss relative to the starting weight.

A final goal for this year is to run an Ultra-marathon. An Ultra-marathon is any run that is longer than a marathon. Most Ultra-marathons are either 50 km, 100 km, 50 miles, or 100 miles long. I'm not sure I'll join an official race, but I'll definitely record the run with my Garmin watch and publish it when I do it. I guess I'll be happy if I could do 50 km to start with.

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